


But I Want His Wings

by poisontaster



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, M/M, Secrets, Sibling Incest, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-23
Updated: 2006-06-23
Packaged: 2018-04-20 07:55:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4779674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poisontaster/pseuds/poisontaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Only one love in a lifetime.</p>
            </blockquote>





	But I Want His Wings

**Author's Note:**

> _i can fly_  
>  but I want his wings  
>  i can shine even in the darkness  
>  but I crave the light that he brings  
>  revel in the songs that he sings  
>  my angel Gabriel 
> 
> _i can love_  
>  but I need his heart  
>  i am strong even on my own  
>  but from him I never want to part  
>  he's been there since the very start  
>  my angel Gabriel  
>  my angel Gabriel  
>  "Gabriel" by Lamb

Dean's still so _angry_.

And really? Sam can't blame him at all. Dean has every right and every reason to be angry. Because the reasons Sam left were very real and very valid and he wouldn't and probably couldn't have changed anything that happened, but the result is still that he left Dean and more than that, he left Dean gutted.

So much of the time, it seems like nothing gets to Dean. Like all the horror and wreckage that passes for Winchester every day life doesn't faze him. But every once in a while, when Dean's particularly drunk, or particularly hurt, or sometimes, right after he's come and before he falls asleep, you can see that shadow far back in his eyes. You can see all the jagged, imperfectly stitched pieces and realize how deep the scars go.

When he was a kid, Sam used to think Dean was the bravest person in the world, because when he got hurt and Dad was stitching or bandaging or suturing—or on one horrific occasion, cauterizing—Dean never cried. He'd bite his lip until it bled and let out this hurt, broken grunt, but he never cried. And Sam thought that was really something. Now he realizes, after his own bleeding, screaming wounds, sometimes you're just too hurt to cry. All you can do _is_ hurt, because it takes up all the space inside you. And that's Dean too.

And so Sam doesn't say anything. Because what difference would it make now, anyway? When you eviscerate someone and leave them with their guts strewn across the ground, does it _really_ matter to them, something that's not even a _why_ so much as a _how_?

He used to be able to tell Dean anything, everything. Every stupid thing that came into his head. Even when he was in those agonizingly private teenage years when everything's just _awkward_ and _embarrassing_ , there wasn't anything that he couldn't really tell Dean. And now…there's just all this silence and this white noise and Sam doesn't know what to do with it or about it or if it's even _his_ to do anything about anyway.

Because he hasn't told Dean. He told Dean "I'd die for you", but he'd also told Dean that he's got to have secrets of his own. And…it's true. He doesn't really know why; the reasons seem less clear than they did at the beginning, before they'd found each other again, before they'd started fucking again, before he'd realized just how _fucked up_ he'd left Dean when he'd gone.

But there are still the nightmares. Not just the ones from now, when it's only Jess, bloodless and accusing in the moments before she's engulfed. It's the memories of the ones before. The ones where he _knew_. When he'd stood at the crossroads and seen in either direction and he'd known.

Because there was a future where Jess lived. Where he'd asked Dean in and they'd found her and they'd closed the wards he'd put on the house and never thought he'd need. They'd pulled her down and she'd lived and he'd stayed and…

And for a while Dean had tried to stay too, but with Jess between them, it was just no good. Because having Sam and not having Sam was killing Dean. And because Dean was slipping and he wouldn't let Sam pull him back. And Sam saw it. He saw it all…Dean, sloppy and drunk and still hunting but not really _caring_. Dean so dead inside that his actual death was only an afterthought, a footnote on a page that had already been turned.

And Sam knew.

A choice had to be made. Only one. Only one love in a lifetime, only one forever. And he'd chosen. And maybe something in him has shriveled and broken and burned away, some person he'd thought he was, some person he wanted to be, but he couldn't… He regrets it, but he can't regret it enough. And that horrifies him. And he doesn't…

Through the anger, Dean still thinks Sam's a good person. That Sam has his head on pretty damn straight. Dean respects him, and that's not something too many people ever get. Not too many people ever get their chance at Dean either, and that's why. And that's why Dean can't ever know.

Because when it came down to it, when the choice was in front of him, Sam never even thought twice.

Only one. Only one love in a lifetime. Only one forever.

And this is the one he chose.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the LJ comm 15minuteficlets in 2006 for the word prompt "honor".


End file.
